Galactic Civilizations III - Beta 6

Galactic Civilizations III Beta 6 is now available! Read the huge patch notes list below for all the shiny details on massive AI and performance improvements, new resource-fueled colony buildings, the high dynamic range lighting update, and much more:

Fixed an issue where planet rings weren't showing up in the battle viewer

Fixed an issue where Antimatter missiles weren't requires their resource

Fixed an issue where the population on shipyards was incorrect

Fixed an issue that kept mods from working if you have a space in your windows user name

Fixed lots of typos specifically in the Colonization and Galactic Events

Fixed bug that caused United Planets to look low res

Fixed an issue where an enemies ships can get stuck on a planet after that planet is captured

Fixed an issue where planet thumbnails would be lost after loading a game

Fixed the Farmers -2 ability so it now correctly applies a penalty instead of a bonus (shame on you for exploiting this!)

Fixed an issue where the Altarian Inherent Magic tech gave +1000% to Accuracy and Evasion instead of +10%

Fixed a big bug that would cause sounds to stop playing, especially on large maps

Fixed a problem where invasions were calculated incorrectly

Fixed an issue where planet icons would be lost when loading a game

Fixed an issue where ship icons would be lost when loading a game

Fixed the Slowdown Galactic Event to correctly impact the moves of ships

Fixed an issue keeping the accuracy bonus from the Ruthless Vision Ideological event from being applied

Fixed an issue keeping the sensor bonus from the Scout Ideological event form being applied

Fixed an issue where a single player had over 1,000 (yes that's one thousand!) separate fleets moving in one turn

Fixed an issue causing Goto and Details on your ships to become disabled if you ever selected an enemy ship

Fixed an issue where Opposing Ideologies was using the base ideology of that ai personality, not the active ideology

Fixed an issue keeping lines from not being destroyed when a starbase was destroyed

Fixed an issue with the Handy trait not correctly applying its ship maintenance modifer

Fixed an issue that could cause 2 icons to show up in some text strings

Fixed an issue where you could research into other tech ages even if you didn't have enough techs for that age

Fixed an issue where you could assign more than 5 sponsors to a shipyard

Fixed the crash in the diplomacy screen if you are playing with more than 40 players

Fixed an issue where treaty duration was broken when reloading a game

Fixed an issue where you might not see the sample ship on the custom faction screen if a game has already been played

Balance

Tech Specializations are now mutually exclusive (when you pick one specialization you can't pick the others) techs are rebalanced to support this

Rebalanced anomaly pirates (they are intended to be beatable by an undamaged Survey ship)

News now unlock more advanced UP resolutions

Rabalanced the Iconian tech tree

Added 4 new Iconian improvements

Added a new Precursor Defense System Component

Added/enabled Government techs for all factions

Updated balance to the game setups defs (number of minors)

Slightly fewer habitable planets on various map sedttings

Rebalanced planetary invasions, they were way to easy before

Rebalanced tech costs

Reduced the minimum requirement to win the up headquarters resolution to 0% (so the player with the most votes wins no matter what that percentage is)

Galaxy United resolution reduced from 10% taxes to 3% and the Approval boost reduced from +25 to +10

Reduced Trade Route income

Reduced Tourism base income

Ideology improvements now all grant points per turn instead of a flat amount when built (which created some exploit issues)

Weapons all significantly rebalanced

Pirates now spawn in unoccupied star systems instead of in nebula

Tweaked the falloff of influence

Invasions now grant some influence to keep the planet form flipping back to the original owners control

AI

AI will discuss diplomatic issues with players

Series of relation based conversations added

Gifted difficulty provides fewer AI bonuses

AI discussion system adjusts how often the player can be contacted based on the number of opponents (1 on 1 the player can esxpect to be contacted once every dozen turns, but with 8 opponents that changes to once every 3 turns for example)

AI less cranky about military ships being in its ZOC -- still cares about transports

Lots of changes to the AIStrategyDefs

All tech trees now have the tags for weapon and defense categories

AI tweaks to AIdefs

AI cares more about the expense of a tech now than before

AI balancing to make it more likely to surrender

Battle Rating modifier for determining power increased from 0.1% to 0.2%

Economic income power now uses the production modifier instead of the treasury modifier

Added AI tags for bigger hulls to the tech tree (some some players may pursue big ships while others prefer large fleets)

New AI modifier called "HumanPlayerhasInvasiontech" added

AI will focus a bit more on targets that are near and in his territory

Planets cry out for defense if they are undefended and nearby opponents have invasion tech

AI determines if targets in its influence area are more worthy to attack than others.

New AI evaluation to determine whether planets are under threat

AI will not determine a victory objective until after 100 turns have been played

If the number of defenders is less than the number of colonies, the AI is more likely to build defenders

Shipyards now have a separate queue threshold (1 instead of 3) than colonies so that they can react quicker.

AI reevaluates its weapon and defense preferences after it gets a new tech

AI does a better job calculationg intelligent weapons and defense techs based on who their primary enemy is

Updated the surrender eval to modify based on the number of major players in the game

AI makes a distinction between potential military might and actual military might

AI no longer uses starbases and shipyards as part of the military might calculation

Military power diplomatic evaluations now uses military power instead of faction power

Gifted difficulty nerfed slightly

Fixed AI bug where it was looking at ships instead of fleets

Fixed bug where AI would not attack defenseless ships if they had a stronger military

AI cares more about map distance now than previous when determining targets

AI will tend to prefer ships that it can hit that turn

The AI won't declare peace with you for 20 turns after war is declared (to keep people from exploiting the AI by declaring war, attacking and then paying for peace)

Military and culture starbases are more offensive to the AI

AI is better about managing its money

AI much better at forming attack fleets (it won't be so defensive)

Peace Treaty value to AI increased by 10X

AIs that don't like you are less inclined to make peace

Planet threat distance reduced from 20 to 10 to prevent AI from being overly concerned with ships

Added new flavor text for peace treaty negotiations

Various modifications to the AI spending strategies

AI will no longer consider a player "Weak" if they have relatively little military

Effect of diplomacy ability is reduced at the start of the game

AI makes a distinction between survey ships and actual assault ships when determining whether to be annoyed

Minor races no longer evaluate freighters and constructors and transports of its own (As it no longer will build them)

AI boosts freighter priority if it has no licenses in use and is at peace

AI now looks at a given tech's intrinsic value to that player based on that particular player's preferences (military vs. culture vs. trade techs for example)

AI just generally smarter at trading in the diplomacy screen

AI makes a distinction when making peace if that player is NOT their primary opponent

AI evaluates both the player's potential military power AND their actual military power for determining courses of action

The AI will no longer produce its biggest, best ships for planetary defense, those are for going out and fighting wars

Looking good, Derek, thanks for posting this. Glad to hear about the pirates and survey ships! I'll also add the inevitable question of, when do you guys think you might release this as an opt-in? Thanks.

Two out of three in the "Specializations" would work for me; but what I would suggest is making that set of selections researchable up to three times. Thus, if you truly want to specialize in one out of the three you have truly done so. If you want to specialize in one more than another, then that's an option as well; and if you choose not to truly specialize in any of them you do have all three (but at a third each of what could've been).

The scroll bar still does not slide on the UP screen as of B5.3. So you can only see about 7 civs or so. Frustrating for those of us playing with extra custom factions and minors, none of which show. I would like to be able to see what percentage of UP votes each of them has before a UP meeting. Can this bug get fixed in Beta 6? Thanks!

As I have been looking at the Tech Tree in B5.3, I still see a lot of techs that are "disabled in Beta."

So I am wondering if in Beta 6 these will be gone or enabled?

And did the Victory Condition of winning a UP vote for Supreme Galactic Leader (or something like that) ever get in? (Lazy of me, but I have to go soon.) It was not in B5.2 as I recall, but I am not sure I have checked yet in B5.3. If it is not in yet, will that Vic Con still make it into the base game?

There is certainly no right answer here. Being mutually exclusive means that there are effectively less techs to research, and less options to the player (since picking 1 pulls 2 other potential techs out of his list for next time).

On the other hand it provides 3 big benefits:

1. It makes the selection of which branch you are taking much more important. We like decisions that players stress over, you want A and you want B, which will you pick?

2. It improves replayability. You may play the Terran every time, but different specialization picks can dramatically impact the way that game goes, and your abilities.

3. It allows us to make the picks bigger. We can do things like provide government type specializations that provide varied and powerful bonuses with the understanding that the player can only have one. Design your own government by the tech specializations you pick as you go up that tree, and design a new one next time.

In the end we went for increased strategy and replayability over the less techs (GC3 already has so many techs!). As I mentioned there is no right answer, but that was out thinking.

1. It makes the selection of which branch you are taking much more important. We like decisions that players stress over, you want A and you want B, which will you pick?

2. It improves re-playability. You may play the Terran every time, but different specialization picks can dramatically impact the way that game goes, and your abilities.

I appreciate getting an official response on this topic, its obviously one close to our hearts:)

I'm still in the "non-exclusive" camp, but I see what you are going for. However...in order to implement your vision, there is a critical component:

TECH BALANCING

Right now, the specializations are not balanced. I know you all are working on changing that, but this is a key to pay attention to. For if the techs are not balanced, the first two points turn against you.

Its probably worth a thread to go through the specializations and see what people's feeling on the matter are.

Would there be any way to mod out mutual exclusivity for specializations if we so desired? Or is it hard-coded? Esp. with regard to colonization techs, exclusivity could be a problem.

I took a look at the XMLs and it doesn't seem that hard to mod out. It looks to me that the only thing that defines a tech as a specialization is when the following is in a tech: <specialization>XXXXXX</specialization>

I haven't tested what will happen when that is stripped out via a mod, but since it appears that techs can have multiple optional pre-reques it shouldnt matter too much. My only real concern is how the tech tree is gonna look.

Would there be any way to mod out mutual exclusivity for specializations if we so desired? Or is it hard-coded? Esp. with regard to colonization techs, exclusivity could be a problem.

Exclusivity does require that the tech tree layout be changed. For example using specializations for the type of extreme worlds you can colonize doesn't work anymore, so that has to be switched.

There isn't any moddable switch for enabling/disabling specialization exclusivity (or even code switch, you might think its a simple and/or line of code somewhere but there are a lot of pieces that play into a change like this). If you wanted to mod something similar to the old functionality I'd recommend creating a tech tree without specializations, but with each specialization option as its own tech with the same parent.

Although I agree that it will be less fun in terms of losing colony potential; aquatic and frozen planets will stay at 50%. Although Derek mentioned something about this, but I'm not sure what he meant